"Chalker, Jack L - G.O.D. Inc 2 - The Shadow Dancers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

and you feel pleasure. In this case, the pleasure would be prolonged and
absolute."
"That's a fairly simplified description of the way drugs like heroin work,
Bill," Sam noted. I got to admit I got a little lost with all them enzymes but I
figured the result.
"That's true, but that's because the plant enzymes, highly refined, are injected
directly. In this case, the process is indirect. We have a controller, almost a
control center, that uses the body's own materials to make what it needs, but it
controls things. With heroin, rejection sets in, the plant substances or
chemicals are expelled, and it's kind of like an engine suddenly losing its oil.
Unlike the engine, your body will eventually replace and start making those
chemicals again, leaving only the memory of the stimuli, but between the time
the enzymes or chemicals are expelled and the time the body needs to replenish
and regear it's like running an engine with very little oil. It gets very, very
sick."
That was the best way to explain withdrawal to a lay person I ever heard.
"It does pass, though, without killing or doing real harm to the body," Sam
pointed out. "You only wish you'd die."
"True. But a lot of what we do is based on pleasure-pain stimuli. The memory of
the rush, just how great you felt, remains, and a fair number are inclined to
get hooked again even if they're forced off. Now this stuff is different. It's
more like a parasite. It spreads over your body, but doesn't duplicate itself to
the extent of harming any part of it. It gets what it needs from the body, and
it's pretty stable once it's complete, but it knows you. Don't ask me how that's
possible, but it does. If it gets into the brain it sort of takes over. The body
abruptly considers it natural and normal. Your body defenses won't fight it. It
survives by controlling that chemical balance, the blockers and the enzymes, in
your brain. If it needs sugars and starches for some reason, it'll stimulate its
host to eat particular things. Ditto for things rich in various minerals and
whatever. It can suppress urges, emotions, desires, or heighten them to near
compulsion."
I got to admit I was gettin' a real sick feelin' inside. "You mean it takes
over, makes the body a slave? It thinks?"
"No. I doubt if anything like this ever could think as we understand thought.
And it just manages the body and stays where it is and gets what it needs and
it's happy, leaving the host to still be him or herself, subject to its
requirements. There actually are some microscopic life forms like this here on
Earth, but all in the lower animals and all known here so far in marine
organisms. We think this is a natural organism. We think that on some world,
somewhere, it was allowed to evolve so that it reached a very high state and
operated on the highest life forms, and on land as well. You can't just catch
it, like a disease. A specially organized cluster-still microscopic but
definite-must invade the new host. Its remote cousins here reproduce by sex
between two hosts-and it can compel its host to have sex, and does. The trouble
is, from its point of view, it doesn't work that way in Type Zeros, so we think
this is from a world quite different from ours."
I didn't remember much from our lessons on the Company, but I remembered what he
meant by Type Zero. That was the type that the home world was-which also
happened to be the type we were, too. Just plain folks. The further away you got
from us, though, on both sides, the more real strong differences came on. Humans